Summary of EU-Japan collaborations through Horizon 2020 and FP7

EU-Japan Cooperation in Horizon 2020 (latest update October 2016)

Regarding the Horizon 2020 Programme, the data collected shows that 39 Japanese entities are so far participating in 33 ongoing projects (56 participations, which means that more than one Japenese entity participates in some projects). The Japanese participation is split in 18 Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions (most of them from the Research and Innovation Staff Exchange action), 9 research and innovation projects, 3 coordination and support actions as well as 2 EURATOM and 1 Infrastructures project. 86% of the Japanese participation accounts for the Excellent Science and Industrial leadership pillars with 24 participations each followed by the Societal Challenges pillar (6 participations) and EURATOM (2). The Industrial leadership projects belong to ICT (5), Space (2) and NMP (1) while the societal challenges are focused on the climate change challenge number five (3) and the Health challenge number one (1). From the 39 Japanese entities participating in Horizon 2020, 6 of them were ranked among the first 10 participants in FP7 whereas 3 entities participate for the first time in a project funded by the EU.

EU-Japan Cooperation in FP7

The internationalization of Japanese research and researchers has experienced an important dynamism in the last years. Japan is ranked nº10 regarding the total cost of the participation[1] among the third countries that participated in FP7 but still really far behind the United States and the Russian Federation that represent the first and second position respectively. The Japanese participation in FP7 has increased year after year since 2007 and around 100 Japanese entities have participated in almost 160 projects and have received around ten million Euros funding from the European Comission (EC). About 62% of the Japanese participation was under Cooperation specific programme, followed by People (around 24%) and Capacities (8%) programmes[2]. Cooperation in the framework of the Euratom fission and fusion programmes (EURATOM[3]) is also well established with around 6% of the total Japanese FP7 participation.

Cooperation between Japanese and European entities in the thematic fields of the projects are mainly oriented towards the areas of information and communication technologies, environment, health, nanotechnology and security, accounting for 80% of the total Japanese participation. It should be noted that most of these themes together with transport, are the areas with the greatest budget of the cooperation programme. ICT has long been the most active area of EU-Japan S&T cooperation, both at policy and project level. Success rates (from proposal to funding award) differ substantially between areas but the overall 31% for all programmes could be considered a good result given that the global overall FP7 success rate is around 20%.

The European counterparts of the projects are spread accross all EU and associated countries, being Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain or The Netherlands the main counterparts of projects with Japanese participants and also the countries with the largest participation in FP7 in general terms.

The Japanese participants are mainly universities and public bodies, being the University of Tokyo, RIKEN and Waseda University the ones with the highest number of participants. Around 70 Japanese affiliated companies located in Europe also participated in the Programme[4]. Most of these companies are engineering and electronics conglomerate companies or belong to the automobile sector with legal addresses in the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

Regarding individual grants, under the People programme 46 Japanese researchers have undertaken mobility and career development research projects in Europe while 3 European researchers have made research stays in Japan. 14 Japanese researchers have been funded by Ideas programme, which support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields and on the basis of scientific excellence.

Figures and tables

Figure 1. FP7 Number of projects with JP participation per year (excluding programmes targeting individual researchers)

[1] The data regarding the total cost of the participation includes both the participant EC contribution and the participant own contribution.

[2] The cooperation programme supports research activities carried out by collaborative projects in trans-national cooperation in ten thematic areas, corresponding to major fields in science and technology; the People programme reinforces international cooperation in FP7 by supporting researchers’ mobility and their career development; the Capacities programme strengthens the research capacities that Europe needs if it is to become a thriving knowledge-based economy. It covers among others research for the benefit of SMEs, development of research infrastructures or specific activities of international cooperation

[3] Euratom aims to pursue nuclear research and training activities with an emphasis on continually improving nuclear safety, security and radiation protection

[4] These entities are legally based in Europe and are counted as European participation but in the framework of the Jeupiste project they have also been analyzed in order to examine the involvement of the Japanese industrial sector in its broadest sense in the European research and innovation System. This analysis has been made separately from the overall Japanese participation data.

[6] It should be taken into account that the United Nations University (UNU) is a global think tank and postgraduate teaching organization headquartered in Japan. The University is comprised of 13 institutes in 12 different countries around the world. The registration of all projects is centralized in the headquarters organization in Tokyo although the projects may take place in an UNU entity outside Japan.